Apparatus is described in the parent U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,135, for making fuel pellets directly from logs without requiring grinding and extruding. In this prior patent, a veneer type lathe is employed in which rolls hold the log and incise the log periphery in patterns to a depth larger than the depth of the veneer knife cut so that all three dimension of the cut off part is precisely controlled.
In the copending, commonly owned patent application 08/65998, a low cost, compact veneer cutting type device is disclosed which employs a press having three rolls for incising, holding and driving the workpiece log and means for pinching the three rolls together at the same time that the workpiece is being rotated in order to incise the workpiece prior to cutoff. In this prior '998 application, the log is peripherally driven by one of the incisor rolls. The motor for peripherally driving the log is mounted on a fixture in which the main power source moves on rails to accommodate the diminishing diameter of the log during operation. Also, in this earlier application, the upper pinch roll is mounted to a moveable carriage mounted to a piston of a cylinder for compressing the carriage into the log. Although the earlier copending '998 application is directed to a compact embodiment, it has several undesirable characteristics. It has been determined to be very difficult to design a reliable pellitizer machine in which the main power drive roll is not stationary. Because a large amount of power on the order of more than 200 HP is involved in the peripheral drive, the clearance required for the sliding motor implies vibrations which can not be eliminated and which lead to reliability problems.